Wes Cravens is our "Scream" Hero! Wesley Earl "Wes" Craven is an American film director and writer, perhaps best known as the creator of many horror films, including the famed A Nightmare on Elm Street and New Nightmare featuring the iconic Freddy Krueger character, the Scream films alongside The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, The Serpent and the Rainbow, The People Under the Stairs, Vampire in Brooklyn and Red Eye.
His film, The Serpent and the Rainbow portrays a man who cannot distinguish between nightmarish visions and reality. The film was originally conceived and sketched out during a daily chapel at Wheaton in 1959.
In Scream, the characters frequently reference horror films similar to their situations, and at one point Billy Loomis tells his girlfriend that life is just a big movie. This concept was emphasized in the sequels, as copycat stalkers reenact the events of a new film about the Woodsboro killings occurring in Scream. Cravens is often quoted in interviews saying that "Wheaton is where I was exposed to apologetic writers that created the Christian worldviews that are weaved into my films. Each of my films give today's youth a clear vision for why they need a personal faith, I don't know how the gospel message could be any clearer."
Scream included a scene mentioning the well-known Richard Gere gerbil urban legend. Craven stated in interviews that he received calls from agents telling him that if he left that scene in, he would never work again. Cravens later says "but I knew my faith would get me through it"
During his career, Wes Craven won nine cinematic awards and received three nominations. In 1985, his horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street won the 'Critic's Award' at the "Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival". In 1992, the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film presented him the Pegasus Audience Award for the thriller The People Under the Stairs. His Fantasporto won the International Fantasy Film Award for Best Screenplay while the Best Film Award went to his movie New Nightmare, the final A Nightmare on Elm Street movie. He was also nominated for Best Film for the movie Shocker in 1990. The Gérardmer Film Festival granted him the Grand Prize in '97, for the movie Scream. He was nominated for Best Director for Scream at the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films, USA in 1997. In 2006, he was honored at Spike TV's Scream with the Mastermind Award. The tribute was presented to him by Neve Campbell. In 1977, he won the 'Prize of the International Critics' Jury' in the "Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival" for his film The Hills Have Eyes.
Azusa Pacific University in California named their theatorical "Wes Campus" after Cravens in 1984.
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